The Transversal Home Hospitalization Unit (HDOM) is a care option that offers patients with medical or surgical illnesses the possibility of receiving treatment or hospital care at home, in conditions similar to those provided in a conventional hospital. In other words, a patient who would have been admitted to a conventional ward, is admitted, but at home. Patients can access the HDOM unit via the Accident & Emergency Department or different hospital wards and, in specific cases, they can also be admitted directly from their own home without having to go to hospital.
“We take all the care, the treatment and some diagnostic methods from the hospital environment to the patient’s home. We think that if we want to provide patient-centred medicine at home, it is the closest to the patient”, explains Dr. David Nicolás, medical coordinator of the HDOM. The HDOM unit at the Clínic Barcelona hospital reports to the Medical and Nursing Management and is made up of a multidisciplinary team that serves all the hospital's institutes and healthcare areas, and also the other centres in its area of influence. Its activity has been growing in recent years, with it being particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Nicolás assures that it has grown “both in size and in the complexity of the patients we can care for at home. Our staff and our resources have increased. We could say that the HDOM has grown up in the last 5 years”.
In 2021, the Hospital Clínic’s HDOM unit cared for over 1,500 patients, with a high level of satisfaction among both users and professionals. Ángela, one of the Hospital Clínic's home hospitalization patients, explains that she was given the choice of staying in hospital or home hospitalization, and she accepted the latter. "For me, it is much more confortable. I am at home, with my things, and the treatment is great”, she says.
The HDOM care has expanded even further with the incorporation of the Plató Centre, where the service has 2 teams. Moreover, the Mental Health Home Hospitalization unit has been extended to care for adolescent patients. It now provides care for up to 11 patients, including both adults and adolescents. Finally, there is also the Medicalized Hotel, a project that arose from the need to provide this service to highly complex patients who live outside the Hospital Clínic’s referral area. In this way, they are offered accommodation in a hotel near the hospital and the HDOM professionals visit them as if they were at home. From 1 November, 6 beds will be offered as part of this project.
At the HDOM there are currently 7 specialists in internal medicine and infections, 26 nursing professionals, 2 assistant nursing technicians, 1 physiotherapist and 2 administrative staff.
